Thanksgiving Remembered

Tis the season for making funny TV shows about the horrors and humor of Thanksgiving family dinners. Although quite funny, and eerily embarrassing to the core of all sensibility, there is one resonating theme; families, no matter how dysfunctional, are still family. With all our heritage flukes and phopauxs and oftentimes malentendus brut, and I only say them in French so as not to spark any further feuds; there is a bond. A great lineage wheel spinning that washes, and rinses, and sometimes repeats.

I have long thought that the celebrations of gathered kin folk has missed the mark as to the lovely connotation it deserves. One of treasured belonging to something unique and deeply faithful to God, and family. Isn’t it amazing that we are all here at this time together? We are sharing moments that will never return. All of my grandparents, great aunts and uncles were gone by the time I was 24 years old. No more of the elegant dinners Auntie Mimi made for us where we each got our own Cornish game hen. Never would there be grandmas banana bread and custard cups, or feeding squirrels with grandpa Ralph, or watching Auntie Edna mixing up her words after a few martinis, “I am so hungry, all I had today was beaners and weens, ” was a classic.

We all grew, moved away, started families and began our own traditions. Back then we performed out little songs, dressed up for the occasion, ate off of fine silver and drank out of crystal glasses in that little apartment in Minneapolis. All of the memories were grand, as time illuminates them from the past, as they should in reverence, and respect for a bygone era.

I look forward to the holidays, after for many years I now have great aunts again, in laws, and nephews, nieces and many cousins, who breathe life back into the seasons with a fresh reminder; the faces might have changed but family love continues.